 | Charlotte Handy’s paintings explore “the tensions between abstract and literal, land and sea, surface and depth.” (1) The atmospheres established move between the realms of implied, real and imaginary while Handy dissolves perspective to play games with the viewer’s perception. Key in these paintings is the state of constant visual flux: nothing is fixed or certain or final.
Handy’s paintings are a non-representational visual cartography of oceans, landmass, and weather conditions where location is suggested rather than overtly stated. “Her works map dreamscapes; they are the paintings of a self-exiled New Zealander whose eyes comb a phantasmal body of water for evidence of something specific, something familiar.” (2)
The artist generates a search for places as meaning and delivers ambiguity. Just as the land and sea are interchangeable localities, the cross motif predominant throughout Handy’s paintings can be read as a symbol of faith, a navigational point, a ships mast. “A cross marks an edge a line twice drawn, a crease-mark on a map…the position of a star or sun on an astrolabe.” (3) It is also a visual device of emphasis.
“Handy paints uncertainty by choosing to depict wavering mirage-like forms that fade in and out of cloud build-up that has settled over gently lapping waves.” (4) Ambiguity of form, content, depth and meaning within Handy’s paintings are instruments of debate, while also being containers of cerebral beauty and moments held in suspension.
(1) Anna Smith, Sea Lungs for an Inland Sea, 2006
(2) David Eggleton, The Sea Inside, New Zealand Listener, Dec 16, 2006
(3) Anna Smith, Sea Lungs for an Inland Sea, 2006
(4) David Eggleton, The Sea Inside, New Zealand Listener, Dec 16, 2006
Charlotte Handy was born in Wellington, 1967. She attended the Elam School of Fine Arts in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Her contempories included Giovanni Intra, Anna Miles, Michael Parekowhai, and Gavin Hipkins. She was awarded a Senior Scholarship in painting and was invited in her third year at Elam to hold her first solo exhibition at the Betty Wallis Gallery. A move to London in 1994 resulted in Charlotte becoming involved in the British photography scene. She was a finalist in two international competitions, and her work was exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum and The Royal Festive Hall. Her work is held in the National Bank, Minter Ellison Rudd Watts and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade collections, and in private collections in New Zealand, East Asia, Europe and North America.
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